Irving Stone Artist Quotations

An artist would not rise above the mediocrity if he condemns it.

An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.

Nature always resists the artist at the beginning.

To be an artist is first to be a manual laborer.

All artists are crackpots. And it's their finest feature.

No artist is normal. Who happen to be normal cannot be an artist.

I will be an artist. I am sure I will. [Vincent Van Gogh]

I cannot draw a human figure if I don't know the order of his bones, muscles or tendons. Same is that I cannot draw a human face if I don't know what's going on his mind and heart. In order to paint life one must understand not only anatomy, but what people feel and think about the world they live in. The painter who knows his own craft and nothing else will turn out to be a very superficial artist.

He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death.

One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.